western shopping paradise

It is decidedly autumn in Tianjin. Until about a week ago, the weather here was very much like Kansas in the summer. Hot. Humid. Not cool in either the shade or the evening. Then, last Monday, a cold front moved in, the skies opened up, and rain fell for about 18 hours straight. Ever since, the temperatures have been in the 60's and low 70's in the day, and even cooler at night.

I love this kind of weather. Even if it is damp, I would rather be a little bit cool than hot and sticky all the time. Even if it does get up into the 70's during the day, you can rest assured that the temperature will drop back down to the 50's and 60's in the evening, and you will wake up to a brisk cool morning the next day. One of the things I love best about this weather is that it is baking weather. I love making cookies, quickbreads, yeast breads and cakes all year round, but especially as the temperatures drop. There is something so comforting and warming about eating home-baked sweets when it's cool outside.

Unfortunately for me, most Chinese kitchens do not have ovens. Chinese cuisine isn't exactly notorious for its baked goods. An increasing number of families are buying small ovens (like toaster ovens) for their kitchens these days, but ovens are certainly not a standard feature as they are in the U.S. Most of the time, this isn't a problem. We have a microwave and stove-top, and between those two appliances, we can cook almost everything we want.

However, as the temperature began to turn, I began to be very sad about our kitchen's lack of an oven. I didn't want to spend the entire year being unable to make cookies, brownies, or breads. So, Ben, being the sweet, considerate, generous guy that he is, came home from school one day and said, "Let's go to Carrefour and buy you an oven."

As we stood in the aisle at Carrefour, looking at the four options, ranging in price from about 350 yuan to 700 yuan (about $50-$100 USD), I had a mental image of my culinary life in China changing completely. Of course, I would still take advantage of the readily available and incredibly inexpensive Chinese food at the restaurants and food vendor stalls all around me. But with this oven, I would be able to make casseroles! Cookies! Western-style breads! Just beyond the door to our apartment, the world might still be spinning wildly beyond our comprehension, but within our apartment, within our bellies, we would at times be able to experience the comforts of home.

It was not until we got home and began unpacking our newly purchased oven that I realized: we may have an oven, but I may not be able to use it, or at least not the way I would like to. Here, it is not so easy to find many of the ingredients we consider standard stock in the kitchen. For example, I had not seen cinnamon at any of the supermarkets I had been to. Or chocolate chips. Or cocoa powder. Or most kinds of cheese. Or even yeast, which I thought was baffling, considering the fact that I had seen bread at both foreign and Chinese supermarkets.

Thank goodness for my brother's friend, who I will call J. J has lived here in Tianjin for about five years, and last weekend she offered to take me and Ben shopping at some places where we could buy Western baking pans (also very difficult to find) and Western cooking ingredients. The very first place she took us to was almost unreal! It was just this tiny hole-in-the-wall shop in an alley behind some apartment buildings, but it was completely stocked with every Western food you could wish for but never find in China. Tortillas and tortilla chips. Cheeses. Duncan Hines brownie and cake mixes. Bread and muffin mixes. Smoked bacon. Hershey's Cocoa powder. All kinds of spices, including cinnamon. And much, much more--more than I can even begin to list here.

After about 15 minutes there, our kitchen was fully stocked and ready for baking. My most prized purchase was two cans of pumpkin puree. Before I saw them at that little store, I had visions of me trying to roast an entire pumpkin in our tiny little oven, in order to make my favorite fall treat: pumpkin bread. But now I'm all set. My biggest problem now is trying to decide what I should bake first!

the #1 reason I'm enjoying studying at Nankai:

My classmates are awesome.

Yesterday, Miguel, a classmate from Colombia, invited our entire class to come to his apartment, where we made food and ate together. It was so much fun--we all really enjoy hanging out together, even if we don't all understand exactly what we're trying to say to each other all of the time. There is often a lot of Chinglish/Chinorean/Korenglish/Spanglish (and other combos), as well as a lot of gesticulating involved. But somehow we are able to make it all work.

update on the golden ticket

So, it turns out the receipt I thought was the right one was actually not my internet service receipt. It was a phone service receipt. So, the other day, when I was supposed to go pay the internet fee, I instead went with the plan I mentioned on the last post: I ate a couple of Oreos, and sat down, putting off the task.

Today, Ben finally put his foot down. We HAD to pay the internet service fee, or it would be turned off tomorrow. So, I screwed myself up, all ready to try to convince the people in the internet service office that they didn't really need an internet account number that I couldn't produce anyway, and that they could probably use a phone number, or an address, to look up our account.

Long story short: We went down there. I asked the woman behind the desk if the phone number was what they needed. She said yes, and looked up our account. And then she told us we didn't have to pay the bill until next month.

Ahem.

Guess it's time for another couple Oreos.

waiting for the golden ticket

One of the most difficult things about living in China is this: things that were simple, easily accomplished tasks in the States become great big, pain-in-the-butt chores, partly because of the language gap, but also partly because things operate differently here. For example, today I went to the internet place to pay my monthly internet fee. This is a task I wouldn't even go somewhere to do, were I in the States. I would just punch a couple buttons on my online bank account, and then: click. bill paid. done.

But there is no automatic online paying here, so, bill payment must take place in person, a task made all the more difficult by my lacking language abilities. Anyway, when I got to the internet service office today, I realized I didn't have my account number with me, and I wasn't going to be able to pay the bill without it. Then I realized, I had absolutely no idea what or where my account number was! I assumed it was on one of the many receipts we collected in the first few days we were here. So I came home, took out all the receipts we had saved from those first few crazy days, and spent about 20 minutes trying to figure out which one was the one from the internet service.

Now, here I am, half an hour later, thinking I've figured out which receipt is the right one, but I'm not entirely sure. None of the receipts say anything remotely resembling "internet" in bold print across the top, and I'm tempted to just sit down, eat a couple of Oreos, and put off paying this thing for a couple more days, in the hopes that the magical receipt with the magical account number will magically appear.

the most important lesson of the weekend is . . .

Just because a website tells you that the universal power strip they are selling acts as a converter, and is adaptable to appliances from anywhere in the world, all for just $35, doesn't mean it's true.

Mom brought us one such power strip (thanks, Mom) while whe was visiting last week. On Sunday we tried it out. In the process we blew a fuse in our apartment and completely fried both our modem and our wireless router (both of which we brought over with us from the States). Lucky for us, when the internet account was set up, the guy from China Mobile brought us a modem, so we had a spare lying around, and we now have internet access through that (Chinese outlet-friendly) modem. Unfortunately, we're going to have to buy another router to set up the wireless connection again.

Oh, well. At least Ben and I won't have to lug that modem and router back to the U.S. when we return next summer.

sam and zhou you, 百年好合

It has been a few days since the wedding, but it's been a flurry of activity all week, so this is my first chance to post about it. However, it's a good thing I had to wait so long to write about it, because I now have many, many more photos to share. I was given a bunch of photos from the wedding last night, most of which turned out much better than the photos I tried to take. I have more than a hundred pictures, I think, but I'll just post a few of my favorites here.

If I were to describe a Chinese wedding (or at least this Chinese-American wedding) in one word for my Western readers, that word would be "loud." I have many other impressions, too. The ceremony was very nice, Zhou You was beautiful, Sam was handsome, the food was delicious, much fun was had by all--but comparing it to most weddings in the States, the clearest distinction I can make is that it was LOUD.

The ceremonies began with hundreds of firecrackers going off as the bride arrived with her attendant in a red convertible. That was crazy--a little bit like a war zone, with flying bits, explosions, and smoke everywhere. Ben and I actually had to run away once the firecrackers started going off, because little burning bits were hitting us in the legs! After the smoke cleared, confetti-poppers (I'm not really sure what they're called, so that's the term I'm sticking with) were set off as the bride got out of the car. That was actually Ben's and my job for the evening--to set off two of those poppers. It was kind of a lot of pressure, actually, because people kept telling us things like: "Make sure you stand here, not here, and with your back to the wind," and "Do it quickly," and "Are you sure you can do this?" But we managed it in the end.

Once we got inside, the ceremony was a kind of amalgamation of Chinese elements and American elements. For example, Sam and Zhou You exchanged vows and rings. But they also included a tea service in the ceremony, in which the bride and groom serve their new parents-in-law tea, calling them "mother" and "father" for the first time. The majority of the ceremony after that was made up of people giving speeches, vouching for the integrity and character of the bride and the groom, and sometimes presenting gifts as they did this. Sam's friend Charlie served as an interpreter for the ceremony, interpreting the Chinese speeches into English, and the English speeches into Chinese. This was really a lovely part of the ceremony, and it was very interesting to hear what each person had to say about these two.

However, even this part of the ceremony was loud. It all took place in a banquet hall, and throughout the whole thing, there was pop music playing, not exactly full-blast, but much more loudly than you might expect at an American wedding. All the guests sat around round tables, and many of them were drinking, smoking, and chatting throughout the ceremony. In fact, at times it was quite difficult to hear what was being said by those giving speeches, at least from where we were sitting. It was also kind of difficult to see. And so a lot of people decided to stand rather than sit. But then they were standing right in front of where you were sitting, so you had to stand, too, or else join the guys smoking and chatting at the table next to yours. In the end, we stood some, sat some, stood some more, chatted a bit, listened here and there. It was a very casual, but festive atmosphere.

After the ceremony, the banquet began, and boy, was it a ton of food. The servers just kept bringing out more and more dishes--more than anyone could possibly eat! And all the tables were supplied with endless rounds of beer, red wine, and baijiu, which is sometimes translated as "white wine," but is actually a kind of clear alcohol made from sorghum. As you can imagine, things became all the more festive as the bottles emptied.

As everyone began eating, Sam and Zhou You changed clothes. Then, throughout the banquet, they went from table to table, thanking all their guests for coming, and toasting them all. That's one thing that seems to be the same about American and Chinese weddings (at least in my experience): the bride and groom hardly get to sit down and eat.

Here are just a few more photos. In the top left photo are Zhou You's parents, Zhou You, Sam, and my Mom. Top right is Zhou You's dad presenting a poem to the couple during the ceremony. Bottom left is Zhou You and Sam with her maternal grandmother (left) and paternal grandmother (right). The bottom right photo is the couple, their parents, and me and Ben.

ahh...love...

A lot of people have been coming into town for Sam and Zhou You's wedding (which is Wednesday evening), so we've been invited to a lot of events lately: dinner parties, all-day shopping extravaganzas, and bridal showers among them. In fact, all this celebrating has definitely limited my proclivity toward studying. I had a test this morning that I was less-than-well-prepared for. But it's worth it--how often do you get to participate in your own brother's wedding festivities (and in China, no less)?

I'm including a couple of photos of Sam and Zhou You, in honor of their quicky upcoming wedding. I really wish I could share their wedding photos (which I saw last night) with you. Wedding photos in China generally involve an entire day in the studio, and several costume changes, and Sam and Zhou You's photos are no exception. There are a couple in which Sam looks straight out of Saturday Night Fever--they're fantastic. But, alas, I don't have any of those to share. . . yet!

I will try to take (and post) plenty of pictures of the wedding. From what I hear, it should be quite a lively event.